


The Lucas Epilogue

by jujubiest



Series: The Lucas Compendium [14]
Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Epilogue, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 12:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6374143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam tries to find a way to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lucas Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> This will be the last installment of The Lucas Compendium. I hope you've enjoyed it! I plan to do a companion series of little one-shot moments between Lucas and Adam throughout the years, so if there are scenes from this 'verse you'd like me to write, let me know in the comments!

It’s a cold January morning, the sun just barely peeking through the heavy layer of clouds, foretelling the coming snow. There’s a hard wind blowing, the kind that stings tears from the eyes of pedestrians making their way down the gray sidewalks, on their way to work, to errands, school.

All of that noise and movement is muted, back here among the tombstones. It could almost be called silence, if not for the steady, dull roar of the wind.

Adam looks down at the grave in front of him with a cold, lead weight in his chest. He feels a tiredness that penetrates down to his bones, every one of his twenty-one hundred years bearing down on him as he reads the words inscribed on the polished black stone, over and over. He etches them deep into his brain, so he’ll believe them, so he’ll remember. So perhaps he will wake up tomorrow, and it won’t hurt.

He doesn’t think he will ever wake up and find that it doesn’t hurt.

The sound of a footfall in the near-frozen grass causes him to turn, and he sees a familiar figure, wrapped in a heavy coat and scarf, his eyes sad as he takes in Adam and the grave behind him.

“Hello, Henry,” he says, and his voice sounds ancient to his own ears.

“Hello, Adam,” Henry returns softly, stepping up beside him. There’s a certain caution in his posture, nothing like the taught fear that used to straighten his spine whenever he knew Adam was near, but there nonetheless. He’s waiting, Adam realizes. Waiting to see what Adam will do, now that…

…now that…

He still can’t make himself think the words, even with the proof right in front of him, carved into cold, gray stone.

Adam closes his eyes against that proof, against the wary set of Henry’s shoulders, against the belligerently cloudy sky and the silence of the graveyard. He doesn’t want to see them. He doesn’t want to _be_ here anymore.

“How could you do this,” he murmurs. “How could you go the one place I cannot follow?”

“Adam—” Henry begins, but he’s stopped by the ugly sound of grief that tears its way out of Adam’s throat against his will.

“He was quite a special person, wasn’t he,” Henry finishes, though Adam’s sure that isn’t what he meant to say. Adam doesn’t answer. He can’t.

He had forgotten how this felt. The passage of time—too much time, more than any one man should have—had dulled the edges of memory, leaving him entirely unprepared. As unprepared for the sharp, stabbing reality of new loss as he had been for the heady rush of new love when it had swept in and carried him away sixty-eight years ago.

Adam takes a breath that hurts, and then another. Henry reaches out a careful hand and grips his shoulder, a silent gesture of support that Adam leans into because he has forgotten, in the last six decades, how not to need people. How to stand alone and apart as humanity flows around him, never leaving a mark. Lucas, damn him, had made him forget.

Now Lucas is gone, and Adam knew it was coming, had known for weeks…years, really. He had known from the moment he met Lucas that he would die someday. But there was knowing and there was _living_ , and Adam has never so keenly understood the tangible difference between the two as he does now.

It feels as though Lucas’s departure has taken pieces out of him, important pieces, ones he can’t live without. He’s an exposed nerve, all pain. It hurts to breathe.

And he finds himself clinging to it, drowning himself in it daily with a macabre kind of elevation of spirit, because the only thing worse than losing Lucas is the thought that in another two thousand years he will no longer remember what losing him felt like.

He will not go back to that numb indifference. He will not betray Lucas Wahl by forgetting him.

Henry removes his hand, turning as if to go. Adam finds in himself the will to speak.

“He was…” He stops. Swallows, hard. Tries again.

“He was my Abigail, Henry. My guiding light. She kept you human, kept you connected to the world when you were ready to forsake all hope of being a part of life again. Lucas did the same for me. When I was with him, I didn’t think about death. I didn’t wish for it. I even began to fear it, because suddenly life mattered again. _He_ mattered, and he was my life. And without him, I….”

Henry’s shoulders had stiffened when he spoke of Abigail. It’s the one open wound between them, and always will be, Adam knows. Adam doesn’t begrudge Henry his anger. If anything, he understands it now more than ever.

But Henry is, as ever, the better man. After a moment, his shoulders sag, and he sighs and comes back to stand beside Adam, looking down at the grave with a small smile on his face.

“You know,” he says, “Lucas was always oddly fascinated by death. He told me once that was what drew him to my employ. But that what he learned was that more could be accomplished with the living than with the dead.”

“You think you can’t go on,” he continues, voice softening. “You think—perhaps you even hope—that this pain will be the thing that finally ends you for good. But you will survive it, Adam. You will never forget him. You will never stop missing him…but you will survive it.”

Adam isn’t sure any of it is true. But then, that isn’t the point of words of comfort.

He takes in a shaky breath, lets it out. He reaches out and places a hand on the headstone, feeling the cold through his gloves. He says a quiet goodbye to Lucas, for now.

“I know that I will,” he says to Henry, offering a smile that he doesn’t believe. “I know that I have no other choice.”

“There are always choices to be made,” Henry says, not unkindly. “Sixty years ago, you chose to love Lucas. You made him very happy, you know.”

“I like to think so,” Adam says softly. “I like to think that he never regretted or wished to take back his decision to be with me.”

“You know he didn’t,” Henry says gently. “Lucas loved you.”

“And I love him,” Adam says. “He changed me, Henry. Perhaps permanently. I think…I think I will love him forever.”

“Yes,” said Henry. “I think you will.”

They remain at the grave a few moments longer, neither speaking, simply sharing the remembrance of Henry’s friend, Adam’s love. When they depart, they head in different directions. But they part as friends, and they will meet again. For through all the things and people they’ve lost, they have gained one thing: neither is alone any longer.


End file.
